Persiphone Calls

194X

Alba and Thalia had the Sunday off from the factory and had some pictures taken. It was nice to have a day out... A day without the set, center, bang.

Thalia took it upon herself to look after Alba because she hadn't been eating much. She said she was worried about Mitch, of course, "being over there," as she put it. Thalia never pressed her, it's not like there was much conversation over the noise of the line... Anyway they both had their reasons for hard work.

She made sure Alba got some breakfast in her today. Then they went shopping. Thalia noticed Alba was looking at some dresses.
"You'll be shopping for something white soon, I know it," Thalia smiled.
Alba smiled back and flipped a dress sleeve at her, "It's not fair... I can't do it with you, you look like a movie star!"
"Oh, can it sister," Thalia snorted, "You'll be positively glowing when he walks off that boat. Why I bet you'll vibrate right out of your skin!"
Mitch would finish his tour. Mitch would come home with a ring in his pocket and a promise in his heart. Mitch would live. Alba told herself that.
Right now he was somewhere her parents would have known. There may be bullets and mortar fire... there may not. Did they kill differently on Sundays? She wondered.

If she knew where he was she could just go there. She could see him, touch his hand or face. She would know he was right, good... alive. He wasn't allowed to say where he was, and besides he'd be packed and marched before that letter even crossed a censor's desk. She'd promised him she wouldn't come because of the danger, of course that was why she wanted to go so badly. She could be there and back in a second.... She could do it as fast as think it.
He was so far away. Everything seemed so far away. She thought of Bérénice and what she was doing. She thought of the letters, and how they'd gotten shorter, had dwindled and then finally stopped... How it had all happened... How she couldn't change it when it happened again.

She thought of how very much she wanted to be doing something. Something bigger. Alba had already been there in a way, she reminded herself... and she wasn't Bérénice.
So she was stuck, waiting. Riveting on the assembly, because the Secretary Pool didn't let you feel the vengeance in your hands. That's what she'd named her rivet gun, "The Vengeance."

Thalia didn't know everything, of course.
Alba never had much use for hate. What good had it ever brought her? None. Set, center, bang. She worked the line for Mitch, sure, and for the other boys - just like all the other girls. She thought about the other-other girls working for the other-other boys, but that certainly felt different.
Sometimes when she drifted away she thought about falling through windows. Set.
She thought about Olaf. About fire and snow. She felt sweat trickle down an arm. Center.
She thought about the wolves... Bang.

Alba and Thalia went to a matinee. She finally saw it in the newsreels, and recognized it for what it was. She recognized she'd missed it. For all the checking, the waiting, the fear... she had missed it.
Sitting in that dark theater, popcorn dangling from her open, frozen lip, Alba understood better how it must have been for Olaf. It happened years ago for her and left her expecting it to happen every day, and here she was seeing it and yet in her mind it was impossible - it couldn't have happened yet. Not yet. The newsreel was - what? A month old? When was her last trip? Five weeks? Six? Had she missed him by days or by hours? With years to prepare, how was she too late? When she got back the first time, Olaf had called it done... history.
Alba thought about the wolves.
On the line the next day, Alba welcomed the numbness in her hands and the pull and the spasm of the gun as it wrenched her shoulders. She thought about the wolves. Bang. She knew that every rivet she drove, she drove deep into their hearts.

Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon

Alba was looking for a telescope.
She knew that the things she'd been seeing made little sense. She'd been squinting all afternoon at the sun, asking The New Boy what it was she couldn't see in it.

"You're sure you can't look at the sun?" he asked.
"Yes."
"But that's silly. Why not? It's right there," he'd say, pointing to it. Sometimes he didn't understand her or the way she thought at all.
"I can't look at things like you can."
"My hair likes it. My fingernails too." he told her. "Maybe if you just try harder?"
"I tried hard this morning."
"...what happened?" he asked.
"It made me see things. Weird things."
The New Boy asked her what kind of things, and also why that should be surprising in the first place considering that was the entire point of looking.
"Colors. First there is a mountain, and then there is no mountain, and then there is." She told him.
"Yeah, that sounds familiar." Boy looked and just saw the big bright dot he always did. It made him happy. He waved to it.
"I see things that aren't always there sometimes too," he told her.
"I know. Dogs and new neighbors and who knows what else... Oh, and there was that thing by the lake last week."
"She's nice, she's my friend."
"You told me that, yeah." Alba had looked through every box in the shed and couldn't find a telescope.
"Why do you want a telescope?" he asked.
"So when the sun goes down I can look at the stars."
"You can't look at stars either?" The Boy was shocked.
"No - I can, but I want to see them better," she said.
"You might find a relative up there," he said, "if you do would they have to answer your questions, like what's behind the sun and things, or is that just for leprechauns?"
Alba knew The New Boy was a little insane... but she had to admit the idea of things she couldn't see sure rubbed her the wrong way. It was a problem looking for a solution.
"I think if you could see the trains from farther away you'd get a better head start." The New Boy offered, "Maybe you'd win a race with a telescope."
Alba stopped rummaging and thought about it... "Boy, you know - that's actually not a bad idea at all! Help me look in the barn."
She marched for the big wooden building before she remembered Boy's phobia. Alba turned to see him standing where she left him. "Oh come on... Please? It won't be that bad... and I can't get in the boxes by myself..."

"No." Boy said.

Alba didn't know what it was about the barn... it wasn't things made from wood - she'd already established that... "Just for a little bit? You can say hello to Muselon... I know you like her."
"No," Boy said. She may have heard him whisper something else, she wasn't sure. The look on his face though...
"Ok! Hey... we don't have to." She said quick as she could, "I know - let's go to Mr Schonberg's and see if he has any Italian ice? Ok? I'd really like some!"
The New Boy nodded. He took a step toward her, then wagged his head from side to side as if chiding himself while he turned back to get his toy car.

When he caught up with her The New Boy reached up and took her hand.
"Fire is dangerous," he said.
"Yes," she said not understanding him at all, "Yes it is."

Khepri's Eternal Embrace

Irenka Nowakowski had left her laundry hanging to check in on the baking. She was gone for just a moment.

That's how these things always start, she thought to herself, even as she and Jacob from down the way were forcing open the Frost baby's mouth. Jacob said something inappropriately appropriate as he wedged his hands between emerging baby teeth the size of walnuts.

Both had come at the sound of Sorina giving a horrible screech. The source of her screaming seemed to be the sight of her brother's head wedged inside the Frost baby's jaw. Irenka had suspected something of this nature might happen for several weeks. Brimir had been almost fixated on the boy's head for some time. No one knew if it was the shape, the texture, the soft whispy hair and pliant flesh surrounding a hard target... In any event Brimir had decided on a favorite chew toy. Lucky for everyone Nicolae came from a sturdy people.

Kacper immediately commissioned a wooden "Teether Nicolae" to be carved. It was common in Brimir's native Niflheim to give small logs or tree trunks to teething babies to gnaw on. Mr. Nowakowski suggested that perhaps the local wood had some analgesic effect. Mrs. Nowakowski suggested that maybe logs were simply in front of them and easy to reach in a hurry.

Beside the River Make For You a Tunnel of Green Gloom

Granta had not minded her renaming terribly. Sometime before Alba was born, the family moved. The family name changed, at least that's what Alba had always presumed when Aunt Holda told her, "We all got new names back then, I guess it just happens over time."
Her mother, she was told, was normally placid, sweet ... Frau Holda would describe her as a gentle soul whenever Alba asked. She chose her moments if circumstances demanded though, and little may have withstood the tides of her mood when it turned dark.
"She had a bit of a falling out with your uncle Ogma, you know..." Holda told her. "He was a brash one. Always wanted tribute, Ogma did. He was about showing off. A bit of a silver tongued braggart, really. That wasn't your mother's style. She didn't make waves. She was like water on a stone. Quiet. Resolute. Inevitable. Oh he'd make a right mess of things, but you'd enjoy hearing him do it."
"What made them argue?" Alba asked her.
Holda looked intently at the dough as she kneaded, powdering it and preparing it to be rolled out.
"They didn't agree about our place in the world," Holda said. "He was too old-country. He refused to leave it behind. Simple as that really."

Alba didn't recall much about her mother. She said as much.
"I remember her smell," she said, "but I probably couldn't describe it. I remember how much she liked living by the river with father." Alba looked at her hands, wondering if they bore any resemblance at all. "The way she used to look at me and Bérénice," Alba recalled, "It would make me feel so loved."

"Well," Holda said, putting the rolling pin down and cutting Alba a corner of the dough to eat, "I'd say if you remember that then you remember her as she'd have wanted."

Alba chewed and they both watched The New Boy - who had been busy in a corner for the last half hour in an elaborate game composed of yarn and what he described as Alba's invisible puppy. He looked up suddenly as if just remembering an important errand, "Can I have a cookie?" Holda agreed and went to the cupboard.
While she was away the New Boy told Alba, "She's nice and I like her. She helps you when you need it. She's my friend." Alba nodded and gave a small, polite noise - which is what she had taken to doing whenever The New Boy would declare things in his odd manner. She could hardly be faulted, as she had no way of knowing that he wasn't talking about Frau Holda anyway.